Plenty more fish in the sea?

IT'S 9.45am in Kenmore village square, and the Dewar's is flowing freer than a river in full spate. A crowd of around 300 are warming their insides with the local distillation, to ward off the chill wind whistling down Loch Tay and cutting through even the most expensive of tweed outfits.

Groups of fishermen in combat fatigues, rods in their hands and keep nets on their backs, wait patiently for the procession to the water's edge to begin. Children with toy rods play at their feet while aristocratic-looking elderly gentlemen with cut-glass accents shake hands and swap greetings with old friends.

It is January 15, the date etched in the mind of anyone brought up within casting distance of the Tay, one of Scotland's great salmon-fishing rivers, and the opening day of the game-fishing season. In a tradition that stretches back more than a century, fishermen and their entourages have gathered in Kenmore's picturesque square to take a dram or two, shiver against the cold and hear the laird give the signal for the off.

The Tay is always the first of Scotland's major rivers to declare its banks open to anyone who wants to hunt the iconic king of fish, the wild Atlantic salmon, which has battled its way thousands of miles across open ocean to reach the river of its birth and spawn in a never-ending cycle of life.

Not many of those gathered in Kenmore, or anywhere else on the prime beats along the river, really expect to fill their waders with fish this early in the season, though. Compounding the difficulties are the storms that hit Scotland through December and January, turning the Tay into a fast-flowing torrent as it pours through the Kenmore bridge and past the imposing turrets of Taymouth Castle. But there is no such thing as a pessimistic fisherman. Despite the blowing gale, the rain squalls and the unusually high water, hope still abounds.

When the Vale of Atholl pipe band strikes up, the anglers fall into line behind, rods high in the air, and move forward as one - like a pike-armed mob about to sack a medieval fortress. Minutes later, they emerge on the banks of the river, where a quaich of the Dewar brothers' finest - made from a burn that flows into the Tay six miles downstream from here, at Aberfeldy - is symbolically tipped over the stern of the laird's boat with the immortal words "Tight Lines for 2007".

As one, anglers lining both banks make their first casts and the salmon season begins. Seconds later, out on the water, black-bearded Andrew MacTaggart, the former laird of Taymouth Castle, arcs his fly out on to the bubbling river in a triumph of optimism over expectation.

Back on shore, he expounds on what draws him and many others like him back every year to pit their wits against an aristocrat of the natural world. "For me it's just an escape," he says. "There are not many other areas of life where you go out in the driving rain and freezing cold, stand up to your armpits in a swirling river and enjoy it. It's a magnificent way of enjoying the countryside as it really is, even if you don't catch a fish."

But he also warns that people can become obsessive about fishing. "I have spent the last 30 years of my life doing it," he admits, "but there are many far worse than me."

It's a sport that appears to be in rude health not only on the Tay, but on the Tweed, the Dee, the Spey and many other world-famous Scottish salmon rivers that have suffered marked declines in fish numbers since the 1960s. In the last three years, rod catches have exceeded 80,000, some of the highest figures for decades. And demand for salmon-fishing beats has never been higher, even though some can cost thousands of pounds per week to rent. Salmon-fishing now injects millions of pounds into the Scottish economy every year, with well-heeled foreign anglers coming only second to overseas golfing visitors in the amount they spend in economically fragile rural communities.

But what of the species itself? Although the upswing in catch numbers is an indication that more salmon are returning to Scottish rivers, does it augur well for the fish's long-term survival? According to the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (Nasco), an inter-government quango that monitors fish numbers, the Atlantic salmon is still in serious decline, and new threats are emerging all the time.

If dedicated salmon fishermen sometimes appear possessed of a wild-eyed strangeness, then consider the fish itself. The lifecycle of Salmo salar is one of nature's marvels, and involves the fish negotiating an assault-course thousands of miles long if it is to return to its home river to spawn and die. The number of dangerous obstacles in the way is proof of the species' toughness and ability to survive.

Before spawning, female salmon scrape depressions into gravel river beds, usually in November or December, where they lay their eggs. These are immediately fertilised by passing males. The eggs hatch around May and the juvenile salmon, smolts, can remain in the same river for up to a year.

The young fish leave their birthplace in early summer and head for feeding grounds thousands of miles away, in the sub-Arctic waters of the Norwegian Sea or off south-west Greenland. Some will stay out at sea for up to four years, but those that return after 12 months are called grilse.

How salmon navigate their way home remains a mystery, although scientists believe that they use built-in receptors that are sensitive to minute differences in the earth's magnetic field and the direction of ocean currents. Their ability to reach the river of their birth is unerring, and probably depends on a chemical memory that allows them to recognise distinctive substances, including pheromones, present in their home waters.

This is a cycle that has remained unchanged for centuries, and it has allowed the fish to return and spawn in their home rivers largely without interference. Salmo salar became the iconic fish of Scotland, a symbol of clean, fresh, unpolluted waters.

All that changed with the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian introduction of game-fishing for sport. While the quality of fishing on Scotland's salmon beats became renowned around the world, industrialists were building weirs to harness the power of rivers for textile mills, and farmers were destroying river banks and using pesticides to increase crop yields. Not only was the passage of the fish upstream being hindered, but their spawning grounds were also being damaged.

Other threats to the salmon included the increasingly sophisticated netting operations being run out at sea by commercial fishermen, who took hundreds of thousands of returning salmon out of the water well before they could reach their native rivers. A decline was inevitable.

Nasco scientists believe that the number of salmon in the north Atlantic has fallen by around half over the last 30 years, and catch records bear this out. In the early 1970s, approximately 12,000 tonnes were being landed every year. In 2005, the figure was just over 2,000 tonnes, the lowest on record.

Some of the decline in catches is down to Nasco's influence in persuading member states around the Atlantic to curb commercial salmon fisheries, mainly through closing down netting operations. For the last five years, there has been no harvest of salmon in the Faroe Islands, to the north-west of Scotland. In western Greenland, the catch has been restricted to a subsistence-only ten tonnes for the native Inuit. The Irish government last year bought out its own west-coast fishermen, while the UK government has likewise succeeded, after a long and bruising campaign, to virtually shut down the Northumbrian netting stations that had such a devastating effect on returning fish. Although some Scottish netsmen are still at work - in the Pentland Firth and on the Angus coast - and are still making a substantial living out of their trade, their numbers are also dropping.

River managers, principally the Salmon Fisheries Boards of landowners and other interested parties, which have adopted a higher profile in recent years, have also played their part in raising the number of fish able to return to the upper reaches of rivers to spawn. Many obstructive weirs, particularly on the Tweed and Tay, have been removed, thus allowing the fish to make easier progress upstream. River habitats have been improved and traditional spawning beds restored to health. Fisheries owners and angling associations now operate catch-and-release policies, which mean greater numbers of fish are returned to the water after being caught. And hatcheries have been set up to raise smolts to boost the stock in rivers.

Yet numbers both leaving and returning to Scotland's rivers remain stubbornly low compared to those in previous decades. Seymour Monro, chairman of the Atlantic Salmon Trust, shares the sense of apprehension hanging over the industry. "There is a great deal of concern," he says, "even though we seem to have had three good years in Scotland relative to the previous two or three decades. In spite of closing down drift nets, and catch-and-release and other measures, we are still not seeing as big a return of smolts going to sea as we should be. Also, those that come back are lighter than they ought to be. This indicates that something else is happening to them out at sea."

Grilse, particularly, are returning much smaller than they should be - some as low as 2lb. And while no one, including the fisheries scientists, can be certain what is causing this trend, global climate change is being blamed.

According to Monro, the small size of grilse indicates they are not receiving sufficient nourishment in their traditional sub-Arctic feeding grounds. The fish's navigational instincts are still taking them to the same areas of the north Atlantic, where they feed on species such as krill and shrimps, and so they should be able to get enough sustenance to allow them to grow rapidly.

This food supply thrives in deep, cold waters, however, and climate change may have already caused a rise in sea temperatures in the areas to which juvenile salmon migrate. Scientists know that the 1960s were at the end of what has been termed a mini ice-age, when Arctic species thrived; now, when today's salmon reach the same areas, they could be finding that their food source has simply melted away. Large numbers of malnourished salmon may be dying at sea. "The problem is that we don't know if this is the result of climate change; we are only going on gut feeling," says Monro. "That's why we need to go out there and find out."

The mystery has prompted the setting up of a new multi-million-pound Salmon-at-Sea research collaboration. Financed by Nasco governments and involving teams of scientists from around the world, its aim is to investigate the factors affecting salmon numbers. Researchers will track the fish from Scotland's estuaries as they travel to the sub-Arctic zones in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of where they go, what they eat and how they and their food sources are affected by changes in ocean currents and temperatures. "It will take many years, but we hope it will provide us with some answers," says Monro. "But even if we find out for certain what is killing them out there, there may be nothing we can do about it."

Closer to home there is concern about the role farmed salmon may be playing in weakening the genetic identity of their wild cousins. While east-coast rivers are witnessing better days, many on the west coast are seeing little improvement in numbers. It is thought that escaped farmed fish may be passing on parasitic sea-lice to the smolts on their journey out to sea and fatally damaging their ability to survive in the open ocean. Additionally, returning fish may spawn with farmed escapees, irrevocably disturbing the vital genetic component that helps their offspring to repeat the natural cycle.

Monro wants the fish-farming industry to introduce stronger nets and cages, which will withstand the stormier weather that climate change already appears to be bringing. "There are genuine fears about the species' long-term survival if we infect the gene pool through fish-farm escapees," he insists.

For now, east-coast salmon-fishing in Scotland appears to be enjoying a renaissance, although the days of landing 64lb monsters (Miss Georgina Ballantyne's remarkable 1922 catch on the Tay's Glendelvine Pool still stands as the British record today) are long gone. According to the Association of Salmon Fisheries Boards, rod catches are stabilising above 80,000 a year - up from a low point of 52,000 as recently as 2003. Salmon that stayed at sea for more winters, and which feed in different parts of the ocean to grilse, are said to be in "superb condition".

For Andrew Mactaggart, the signs are hopeful. But he insists that there is still work to be done. "I first came here when I was nine," he says, "and I have loved this river ever since. That's why I will do everything I can to return it to the way it was. If the salmon come in greater numbers, it's a sign that the whole system is getting healthier. That's what I will be striving for." r